One of my many Blooks is "Song of the Peach Tree Spring" by Wang Wei (8th century) A very enigmatic poem that can have multiple meanings.
A fisherman sails up a river, wandering, and sees a few huts amid the cherry blossoms on the river bank, very secluded. It turns out that this is a little village of people who have dropped out of time, secluded from the world. A small paradise. The fisherman is greeted well but finally must leave. He seeks to leave a trail as he retraces his steps but after returning home and telling of his find neither he nor any other is able to find the way back. Yet a touch of hope at the end, with the suggestion that perhaps any river will take us back, who knows which one.
My blook includes two translations as poetry, one prose version, some analysis and a few biographical details of Wang Wei.
One page from my Blook:-
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SW-User
Given my own way of seeing things, the poem suggests the way of "no-calculation", where things are "made to become so of themselves", this founded upon the pure faith that the Cosmos, Reality-as-is, is healing. The fisherman is simply proceeding without specific direction or even intent - and in so doing finds paradise.
Once again, being me, this suggests the words of Thomas Merton when writing about the way of Chuang Tzu:-
For Chuang Tzu, as for the Gospel, to lose one’s life is to save it, and to seek to save it for one’s own sake is to lose it. There is an affirmation of the world that is nothing but ruin and loss. There is a renunciation of the world that finds and saves man in his own home, which is God’s world. In any event, the “way” of Chuang Tzu is mysterious because it is so simple that it can get along without being a way at all. Least of all is it a "way out". Chuang Tzu would have agreed with St. John of the Cross, that you enter upon this kind of way when you leave all ways and, in some sense, get lost.
Merton also speaks of there being "no door", and further, that we should never presume to have the key, even if we thought that there was a door. Obviously, not advice for any who like certainties, or those who insist that they have "found" and that all others must find just as they have!
The idea of "no way", of getting lost, rears its head again at the end of the poem, when the fisherman lays a trail on his way out. Alas, no matter how carefully laid, no one can follow it, and all get lost as they try to follow the trail. Another form of getting lost! Seeking to follow a formulae, a creed, the Word as Text, feeling "justified" in having "fulfilled" the demands of the formula, the words, dividing ourselves from those who have failed, or who follow another set of instructions. What price Mercy and Grace?
But there is the hope, born of faith, that simply anything, any "river" will bring us to paradise, if even just for a moment.To be surprised by joy, when there comes such beauty and wonder, such a transformation of what we know ourselves to be at another level, that our faith in the natural healing power of Reality is vindicated. If not of "ourselves" then of what?
As Eckhart has said:- If the only prayer we ever say is "Thank You" it is enough.
